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We often suggest making stuff easier for your customers. People like simplicity and convenience. But you don’t have to do anything drastic to make this happen.

Here are three examples of small changes companies made to make decisions, purchases, and feedback incredibly simple for their customers:

1. Stand out
2. Catch them in the moment
3. Get real feedback
4. Check it out: inFORM

1. Stand out

Gas stations and liquor stores seem to always go hand-in-hand. So what makes one gas station/liquor store combo stand out from the rest? This one in Oklahoma has a call box at every pump. You just push the button, tell the employee at Drew’s Wine and Spirits next door what you need, and they’ll bring it to you while you’re pumping gas. Wow. That’s easy.

The lesson: When your customers have a bunch of similar options for where to fill up their car and buy beer, it’s the little, remarkably simple things that help them make a decision.

2. Catch them in the moment

We’ve all done it: try something on in a store’s fitting room, decide you like it, but then change your mind before you buy it. H&M knows that a lot can happen between the fitting room and the check out counter. So they installed registers in the fitting room areas to allow customers to buy their stuff while they’re trying it on and even wear the clothes out of the store.

The lesson: Find ways to let your customers make a decision when they’re most excited about your stuff.

3. Get real feedback

The Listserve is a simple email subscription experiment that picks one of its thousands of readers a day to write whatever they want to the rest of their readership. They have very few rules and guidelines for writers, but since those rules were created when the Listserve had less than 100 subscribers, they’ve decided to update them. To do it, they simply asked all of their readers to follow a link and give their suggestions in less than 280 characters.

The lesson: The only tool The Listserve used was a Google Form with one box to fill out — no signing in, no survey questions, and no verification code — just one question. They’ll probably get lots of great, honest feedback, because they made it incredibly easy to do.

4. Check it out: inFORM

Want to see digital stuff rendered physically in real time? MIT Media Lab’s Tangible Media Group has created a Dynamic Shape Display that looks like something from a sci-fi movie (and a whole lot of fun).

I taught word of mouth marketing at Northwestern University and internet entrepreneurship at the Wharton School of Business. I’m a serial entrepreneur who founded and advises startups and nonprofits. And I’m a rabid purist on the topic of marketing ethics.

About This Blog

"Damn, I Wish I'd Thought of That!" is full of unusually useful ideas borrowed from the smartest marketers. Good marketing is more about brains than bucks. The best business ideas are easy to do, inexpensive, simple, and fun. Learn to simplify your business, earn word of mouth, and thrill your customers.